Country Portfolio Reviews: A tool for strategic portfolio analysis in German development cooperation

Background and objectives The 2030 Agenda is making new demands on international cooperation International development cooperation is frequently criticised for being of limited effectiveness, and therefore doing little to actually promote sustainable development. It is undisputed that shortcomings in policy and institutional frameworks in partner countries, and inefficient structures and processes in international cooperation, prevent development cooperation from being more effective. In particular, partner country institutions face the challenges created by the growing fragmentation of development cooperation. More and more stakeholders are getting involved in development cooperation and playing an active role in more and more projects. In some partner countries many donors operate in the same sectors instead of complementing each other, which makes the task of coordination more complex for partner governments. In many cases, donors' working structures also act as a constraint on more effective development cooperation. Existing projects and programmes are continued for political reasons or due to the self-interest of implementing organisations, rather than in response to changing contextual factors. This means that the decisions taken are not always evidence-based. These challenges often prevent development cooperation from responding coherently and effectively to current development needs in a partner country, and prevent governments in partner countries from assuming ownership of joint development projects. Since 2015 the 2030 Agenda has provided a guiding framework for action by international cooperation. Through it the international community has agreed on a new understanding of development as well as 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It emphasises the alignment of international cooperation with partner country priorities and needs. The Agenda aims to achieve a holistic perspective on development challenges, and to take greater account of the interactions between the social, economic and environmental dimensions of development than has so far been the case. Against this background, ensuring the relevance and ultimately also the effectiveness of bilateral development cooperation will require strategic steps to be taken on various levels. This will involve focusing bilateral development cooperation as a whole (macro level), ensuring strategic alignment and coherence at country level (meso-level), and enhancing planning and management at programme and project level (micro level). The BMZ has responded to these new demands on international development cooperation With this very much in mind, over the last few years the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has launched processes of structural change for the strategic planning and management of its bilateral development cooperation. Alongside efforts made by the BMZ at the macro level to focus bilateral development cooperation, an increasing number of changes are being implemented at the meso-level. As also emphasised by the strategy paper Entwicklungspolitik 2030 ['Development Policy in 2030' – currently only available in German] published by the BMZ in 2018, rather than pursuing a compartmentalised focus on individual programmes and projects, it is envisaged that portfolio management will now focus on integrated and holistic country-level approaches. These changes at the meso-level reflect the understanding of development inherent in the 2030 Agenda. Be it the coherent design of country portfolios, focusing on macro-level development needs and trends in the partner country, responding to current reform momentum and government priorities, or including interactions between the social, environmental and economic dimensions of development – needed management decisions cannot be taken at the level of individual projects. They can only be made at the portfolio level. Accordingly, the BMZ has been seeking to strengthen the coherence of country portfolios through country strategies ever since 2012

Grounding Evaluation Capacity Development in Systems Theory

While “systemic thinking” is popular in the context of capacity development and evaluation, there is currently a lack of understanding about the benefits to employing systems theory in evaluation capacity development. Systems theory provides a useful orientation to the work involved in complex systems (e.g. national evaluation systems). This article illustrates how evaluation capacity development practitioners can use systems theory as a conceptual tool to gain a better understanding of the functional aspects and interrelationships present within a given evaluation system. Specifically, the systems theory perspective can help elucidate the reasons for the success or failure of a given evaluation capacity development program or activity. With the goal of motivating evaluation capacity development practitioners to use systems theory in their work, this article presents a systems theory framework for evaluation capacity development and offers practical examples of how it can be adopted

The Woody Guthrie Centennial Bibliography

This bibliography updates two extensive works designed to include comprehensively all significant works by and about Woody Guthrie. Richard A. Reuss published A Woody Guthrie Bibliography, 1912–1967 in 1968 and Jeffrey N. Gatten\u27s article “Woody Guthrie: A Bibliographic Update, 1968–1986” appeared in 1988. With this current article, researchers need only utilize these three bibliographies to identify all English-language items of relevance related to, or written by, Guthrie

Tolerance of Deregulated G1/S Transcription Depends on Critical G1/S Regulon Genes to Prevent Catastrophic Genome Instability

Expression of a G1/S regulon of genes that are required for DNA replication is a ubiquitous mechanism for controlling cell proliferation; moreover, the pathological deregulated expression of E2F-regulated G1/S genes is found in every type of cancer. Cellular tolerance of deregulated G1/S transcription is surprising because this regulon includes many dosage-sensitive proteins. Here, we used the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe to investigate this issue. We report that deregulating the MBF G1/S regulon by eliminating the Nrm1 corepressor increases replication errors. Homology-directed repair proteins, including MBF-regulated Ctp1CtIP, are essential to prevent catastrophic genome instability. Surprisingly, the normally inconsequential MBF-regulated S-phase cyclin Cig2 also becomes essential in the absence of Nrm1. This requirement was traced to cyclin-dependent kinase inhibition of the MBF-regulated Cdc18Cdc6 replication origin-licensing factor. Collectively, these results establish that, although deregulation of G1/S transcription is well tolerated by cells, nonessential G1/S target genes become crucial for preventing catastrophic genome instability

Slowed Prosaccades and Increased Antisaccade Errors As a Potential Behavioral Biomarker of Multiple System Atrophy

Current clinical diagnostic tools are limited in their ability to accurately differentiate idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) from multiple system atrophy (MSA) and other parkinsonian disorders early in the disease course, but eye movements may stand as objective and sensitive markers of disease differentiation and progression. To assess the use of eye movement performance for uniquely characterizing PD and MSA, subjects diagnosed with PD (N = 21), MSA (N = 11), and age-matched controls (C, N = 20) were tested on the prosaccade and antisaccade tasks using an infrared eye tracker. Twenty of these subjects were retested ~7 months later. Saccade latencies, error rates, and longitudinal changes in saccade latencies were measured. Both PD and MSA patients had greater antisaccade error rates than C subjects, but MSA patients exhibited longer prosaccade latencies than both PD and C patients. With repeated testing, antisaccade latencies improved over time, with benefits in C and PD but not MSA patients. In the prosaccade task, the normal latencies of the PD group show that basic sensorimotor oculomotor function remain intact in mid-stage PD, whereas the impaired latencies of the MSA group suggest additional degeneration earlier in the disease course. Changes in antisaccade latency appeared most sensitive to differences between MSA and PD across short time intervals. Therefore, in these mid-stage patients, increased antisaccade errors combined with slowed prosaccade latencies might serve as a useful marker for early differentiation between PD and MSA, and, antisaccade performance, a measure of MSA progression. Together, our findings suggest that eye movements are promising biomarkers for early differentiation and progression of parkinsonian disorders